- Climate change adaptation of coffee production in space and time. There’s a plan, at least for Nicaragua.
- Journey to the east: Diverse routes and variable flowering times for wheat and barley en route to prehistoric China. Growing in diverse environments pre-adapted barley for its shift to spring sowing and move eastwards to China.
- Capturing haplotypes in germplasm core collections using bioinformatics. Fortunately, “the number of accessions necessary to capture a given percentage of the haplotypic diversity present in the entire collection can be estimated.”
- Pollinator Diversity: Distribution, Ecological Function, and Conservation. 350,000 species!
- Roots, Tubers and Bananas: Planning and research for climate resilience. Much the same, but faster.
- Priorities for enhancing the ex situ conservation and use of Australian crop wild relatives. Go north, young woman.
- Consequences of climate change for conserving leafy vegetable CWR in Europe. Go, err, northwest.
- Phylogenetic relationships, diversification and expansion of chili peppers (Capsicum, Solanaceae). Monophyletic clade which originated along the Andes of W to NW South America and spread clockwise around the Amazon.
- The Aegilops tauschii genome reveals multiple impacts of transposons. The D genome bites the dust.
Nibbles: Joanne Labate, Gebisa Ejeta, David Spooner, Strawberry 101, Mad honey, First figs, Agrobiodiversity maps, School project, Takesgiving, Private investment
- USDA vegetable crop curator tells it like it is.
- $5 million to find more Striga resistance genes in sorghum.
- Wild potato herbarium specimens find good home.
- How two New World strawberries got together in the Old World and then spread all over the world.
- Hallucinogenic honey: what could possibly go wrong?
- First farmers gave a fig.
- The other of all agrobiodiversity map mashups.
- Cool school project on crop diversity in Europe.
- In other news, “Columbusing” is a thing.
- Private sector investment in conservation: Turning “small and new” into “big and familiar.”
Brainfood: Banana diversity, Cacao and CC, Coffee and CC, Zosya diversity, Certification, Genetic surrogates, Potato diversity, Food sovereignty, Swiss wheat, Seed storage, Golden potato
- Diversity and morphological characterization of Musa spp. in North Kivu and Ituri provinces, Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. New cultivars still being discovered.
- A review of research on the effects of drought and temperature stress and increased CO2 on Theobroma cacao L., and the role of genetic diversity to address climate change. We have the diversity. But for how long?
- Climate change adaptation of coffee production in space and time. Gonna need Plans B and C. But do we have the diversity?
- Evaluation and Breeding of Zoysiagrass Using Japan’s Natural Genetic Resources. Stick to morphology.
- Where are commodity crops certified, and what does it mean for conservation and poverty alleviation? Less for poverty alleviation than for conservation. But more and better spatial data needed, especially on organic certification.
- Environmental and geographic variables are effective surrogates for genetic variation in conservation planning. Phew!
- Genome diversity of tuber-bearing Solanum uncovers complex evolutionary history and targets of domestication in the cultivated potato. More diversity in the landraces compared to wild species than in any other crop, few genes involved in early improvement, and different loci for adaptation to uplands and lowlands; also, wild relatives involved in diversification of long-day types.
- Agricultural biodiversity is sustained in the framework of food sovereignty. Peasants feed the world.
- Crop domestication facilitated rapid geographical expansion of a specialist pollinator, the squash bee Peponapis pruinosa. Bee follows crop follows people.
- Unlocking the diversity of genebanks: whole-genome marker analysis of Swiss bread wheat and spelt. Early breeders missed some stuff.
- A probabilistic model for tropical tree seed desiccation tolerance and storage classification. Predict storage behaviour from morphology.
- Potential of golden potatoes to improve vitamin A and vitamin E status in developing countries. Here we go again.
Nibbles: ICARDA genebank, Mexican honeys, NWFP news, Schisandra, Swimming camels, Barley genome, Silly video, Tasty breeders, Tall maize, Praying for the prairie, Rosaceous breeding, Millet fair, Sesame entrepreneurs, Thai gardens, Apple resistance, Native Californians
- Latest on the ICARDA genebank from the author of The Profit of the Earth.
- Honey diversity in Mexico.
- Speaking of which, did we already point to the new, improved Non-wood Forest Products Newsletter?
- The schisandra berry is apparently helping save the panda. Yeah, I never heard of it either, but more power to its elbow.
- Make your day better by looking at pictures of aquatic camels.
- Oh, here we go, cue the endless stream of stories about how genomics will save beer.
- “In the last century, 94% of the world’s seed varieties have disappeared.” No, they bloody haven’t. Only linking to this for completeness.
- Breeders get into flavour. Because celebrity chefs.
- That’s one tall maize plant. No, but really tall.
- The Great Plains are in Great Trouble: “Hundreds of species call the prairie home… A cornfield, on the other hand, is a field of corn.”
- A project dedicated to the genetic improvement of US rosaceous crops. Love that word. Rosaceous.
- Eat those millets!
- Sesame opens doors in Tanzania. See what I did there?
- WorldVeg empowers women through gardening. I know how they feel. Well, kinda.
- Want a Forbidden Apple? You know you do. #resist
- “Accustomed to seeing crops planted in straight rows featuring one or a few different varieties, Muir and his European predecessors were not prepared to recognize this subtler form of horticulture. And so they viewed California Indians as lazily gathering the fat of a landscape they had hardly touched.”
Brainfood: Banana identification, Donkey domestication, Mouse domestication, African cattle, Pig domestication, Biofuels, Biofortification, Genomics for breeding, Species movement, Crop diversity double, N fixation, Ag commercialization models, Wild beans, Brassica domestication, Teaching biodiversity
- Molecular and cytological characterization of the global Musa germplasm collection provides insights into the treasure of banana diversity. 16% of 1500 accessions need taxonomic verification. Could have been much worse.
- Why the Donkey Did Not Go South: Disease as a Constraint on the Spread of Equus asinus into Southern Africa. Gap in distribution between Kenya and southern Africa until colonial times probably down to trypanosomiasis.
- Origins of house mice in ecological niches created by settled hunter-gatherers in the Levant 15,000 y ago. Hunter gatherers inadvertently domesticated the mouse.
- The genome landscape of indigenous African cattle. Now we know where the genes for heat tolerance and tick resistance can be found, and it’s where you’d think.
- Insights into early pig domestication provided by ancient DNA analysis. In northern Europe, around 4000 BC, people started crossing pigs from the south with local wild boars. What were they thinking?
- Recent grassland losses are concentrated around U.S. ethanol refineries. The revenge of geography.
- Provitamin A biofortification of crop plants: a gold rush with many miners. “One crucial aspect that needs further experimentation is whether β-carotene-fortified crops can improve vitamin A status in the main targets of the biofortification efforts, that is, malnourished adults and children.” Just going to leave that out there.
- Genomic innovation for crop improvement. Longer reads needed. Is there no satisfying these gene-jockeys?
- Biodiversity redistribution under climate change: Impacts on ecosystems and human well-being. Species movements affect ecosystem functioning and service provision: “The indirect effects of climate change on food webs are also expected to compound the direct effects on crops.”
- Feeding the Household, Growing the Business, or Just Showing Off? Farmers’ Motivations for Crop Diversity Choices in Papua New Guinea. Some people grow lots of crops because it’s cool. But why wasn’t this done at the intraspecific level?
- To Specialize or Diversify: Agricultural Diversity and Poverty Dynamics in Ethiopia. Forget coolness, crop diversity makes you less poor.
- Biogeography of nodulated legumes and their nitrogen-fixing symbionts. Australia is weird.
- Plantations, outgrowers and commercial farming in Africa: agricultural commercialisation and implications for agrarian change. They all have their place.
- Genomic history of the origin and domestication of common bean unveils its closest sister species. Wild populations from northern Peru and Ecuador are not derived from wild Phaseolus vulgaris which migrated there from Mesoamerica but are actually a different species which predates the evolution of wild common bean.
- Genomic inferences of domestication events are corroborated by written records in Brassica rapa. Five genetic groups, with rapini at the base.
- Walking and talking the tree of life: Why and how to teach about biodiversity. Forget ranks, try clades.